Infinite Game Music - The Chiptune EP ===================================== Released 16 December 2005 Prolog ====== Infinite Game Music would like to introduce Grzegorz Kwiatek, Virt, Naruto and Maktone, four modern composers that utilize old hardware to make their music. To the untrained ear, game music and chiptunes might not sound impressive at all. In fact it might sound like crap. But so does death metal and other genres until you get into it and start to realize that the music is in fact fantastic. Who knows, maybe someone finds this compilation useful. Kind of an "Introduction to Chiptunes". :) The Chiptune EP is a tribute to these awesome composers. Four superb tunes from some of the best chiptune musicians out there. Download the album now and enjoy! High-res versions of the paper covers are included in the album download. Tracklist ========= 1. Grzegorz Kwiatek - Alive 2. Virt - Good Morning, Dracula 3. Naruto - N-tune 001 4. Maktone - Addiction Track detail ============ 1. Grzegorz Kwiatek - Alive Grzegorz Kwiatek is The Wizard of Grayscale, perhaps more known as Greg. A musician as good as Jean Michel Jarre, Trent Reznor or Koji Kondo, Kwiatek doesn't use expensive state-of-the-art equipment to compose music. His instrument of choice is instead an archaic Atari 65XE. Kwiatek's music is very engaging and full of energy. Sometimes it's calm and beatiful, other times it's fast and intense. He mixes old-school arpeggios with more modern bass tunes and drums to create vivid and varied tunes. It's hard to understand how Greg squeezes out this kind of sound from the old Atari. You'll have to hear it to believe it. It sounds like several Ataris playing simultaneously using some kind of bass boosting system. The sound is superb and the first time I heard it I thought it was a PC. It's even better than most of the Amiga and Atari ST tunes I've heard. Incredible! Alive is as track from the album Voice of Silence V - Cogito from 1999. It starts with a typical Atari lo-quality sound simulating a storm. Then the arpeggios come in while the volume increases a bit. Eventually it explodes into an intensive and very cool tune. Kwiatek has written well over 100 tunes for the Atari, many of them masterpieces. Do yourself a favor and download the complete Greg's Atari Music Archive now! Many thanks to the Kohina team for playing his songs. (c) Grzegorz Kwiatek 2. Virt - Good Morning, Dracula Virt (aka Jake Kaufman) is the kind of musician that surprises you with each song he plays. His music is very versatile, he makes great chiptunes and he's also a good guitar player. He has covered several tunes mostly from the NES and the SNES with live instruments. I thought the Minibosses played good NES music but when I listened to Virt's covers I were totally blown away. Virt is heavely influenced by Konami tunes on the NES. As you might have noticed by our compilations, he's not alone in having a good taste :) Good Morning, Dracula is the intro tune from the FX compilation, released in 2001. While not composed with a NES, it still features a great NES/Konami sound. You can easily hear that the Castlevania-series are the main influence in this tune. Good Morning, Dracula has a great flow and is very varied. It's a cool adventurous tune with a lot of atmosphere. Pay a visit Virt's site and to VGMix to check out more of his stuff. As they said at Mono, Virt is the Rob Hubbard of this decade. Many thaks to SLiVeR for pointing out Virt. (c) Virt 3. Naruto - N-tune 001 Naruto is a japanese chiptune composer featured in the 2A03 NES Music Archive. It's a little bit hard to get information about Naruto as his web page is completely in Japanese. Perhaps he'll put up a page in English sometime so we can learn more about him. Naruto has composed many tunes on different systems such as NES, MSX, MU100 and more. His music is influenced by anime and manga and in many tunes it feels like you're listening to a wonderful anime soundtrack. Other tunes are a bit heavier with a sound similar to Gradius V for the PS2. N-tune 001 is a wonderful feelgood tune. It keeps a good pace and has a very nice break before it starts over again. It's hard to find better sounding music than this on the NES. As with the other composers on this EP, Naruto's music is very professional and he's definitely one of my favorite composers. (c) Naruto 4. Maktone - Addiction Maktone is a brief fellow. His web site is clean with many SID and MOD tracks but very little talk. I've seen people in his guestbook asking for mp3 or midi versions of his songs for a long time, but he doesn't seems to pay attension. Or perhaps he's a busy guy and just doesn't have the time. Maktone has written a lot of music but IMO, he totally nailed it with Addiction. This song is so good I once had it looping for an hour at work before I noticed I was listening to the same song. If I had the chance to change anything in this track I wouldn't change one single note. It really is that good. Maybe it's just me, but this is one of the best song I've ever heard. All music genres included. (c) Maktone Additional Bonus Tracks: http://www.eightecs.com/infinitegamemusic/igmvolctep/igmctep_1b.zip